Lifetime of Liturgy

A Lifetime of Liturgy Maurice Taylor © 2013 Maurice Taylor, Emeritus Bishop of Galloway A LIFETIME OF LITURGY BEFORE, AT AND AFTER VATICAN II CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 2 SOME PRE-CONCILIAR RECOLLECTIONS 2 IN THE 1930s AND 1940s 2 IN THE 1950s 7 THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL (1962-1965) 11 PREPARATIONS 11 THE HESITANT START 12 CONSTITUTION ON THE LITURGY 15 IMPLEMENTING THE CONSTITUTION ON THE LITURGY 19 Fundamental purpose of the Constitution 19 Four general directives 21 Three criteria to govern the reform 24 Specific reforms of the Eucharistic liturgy 26 Appreciating the Eucharist more fully 33 Personal observations 35 Some suggestions and reminders 37 Concluding thoughts 39 INTRODUCTION To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the Church is celebrating a “Year of Faith”. It began on 11th October 2012, exactly fifty years to the day from the start of Vatican II, and continues to the feast of Christ the King on 24th November 2013, just before Advent that year. During the Year of Faith, we are recalling the events of the Council and studying its various documents. My particular interest being liturgy, I have spent quite a lot of time on that subject, re-reading the Council’s document, the Constitution on the Liturgy, usually called Sacrosanctum Concilium (the first two words of its Latin text). I have been invited to lead several discussions and give some talks on the Constitution. My knowledge of the Constitution as well as my appreciation of its teaching about the liturgy, and especially on the Eucharist, are both being deepened as a result. Moreover, I have been thinking more widely about the Church’s liturgy and especially on my own experience of the way that we celebrate Mass and the various changes and adaptations that have taken place in it during my life. From those thoughts, the idea of this article emerged. One of its aims is to share with readers some of the memories I have. If you are old enough, they will probably revive your own memories; if you are not, you will, I hope, be interested in learning the varied range of ways, bizarre sometimes and laboured on other occasions, in which we used to celebrate the Church’s liturgy and, specifically, the Mass. That is my purpose in the first part of this article. The second part is a somewhat more serious attempt to review the Liturgy of the Eucharist as reformed by the Council, to explain the changes and to uncover the hidden riches of the Roman rite of Mass, as celebrated in accordance with the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium of the Second Vatican Council. SOME PRE-CONCILIAR RECOLLECTIONS IN THE 1930s AND 1940s Having been born in 1926, I first became conscious of going to church and being at Mass sometime in the early 1930s. As a family comprising father, mother and children we went to Mass every Sunday morning in St Cuthbert’s church, Burnbank, Hamilton, which at that time was in the archdiocese of Glasgow. There were several Masses each Sunday morning: at 8 o’clock, 9.15, 10.30 (principally for schoolchildren) and 12 noon (the only one with singing). We normally attended the first Mass, at which the church was only half-full although on two Sundays every month the Men’s and the Women’s Sacred Heart Confraternities occupied the central nave of the church. There were also monthly Masses for the Children of Mary (females, teenage and young adults) and the Boys’ Guild (males, similar age range). The 10.30 Mass attracted most of the children who 2 were pupils at the local Catholic primary school. Some of the teachers supervised them while the head teacher led them, phrase by phrase, through Prayers Before and After Holy Communion, with a brief silent break during the Consecration. The last Mass was one that many people, including our family, avoided because (a) it was longer than the others with a choir which sang hymns (with some of the congregation joining in) and even some parts of the Mass: Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and/or Agnus Dei; and (b) only the priest received Holy Communion since the required Eucharistic fast was total, including even water, and from the previous midnight. In those days, the attendance at Sunday Mass was much greater than now; at least double the numbers, I should guess. In particular, there were very few primary school children who missed Mass since, on Monday morning, they were brought to the front of the class to be lectured and shamed (and perhaps even given corporal punishment, although I cannot be sure of this). One or other of my siblings frequently was publicly scolded for not having been at the children’s Mass, having attended an earlier Mass with the rest of our family. The general view, in the 1930s and later, was that Mass in the Roman rite was unchangeable and fixed for all time to come; the Council of Trent and Pope Pius V had, in the sixteenth century, made all the changes that we would ever need. Certainly, there were liturgical seasons and there were three prayers said by the priest - Collect, Secret and Post-Communion S which varied from Sunday to Sunday. In addition, the Epistle, Gradual Psalm and Gospel were different each week. The passages chosen were appropriate at special times such as Lent and Easter, Advent and Christmas, but during the rest of the year they seemed to have been completely randomly selected and without any continuity in the passages from week to week. The rest of the Mass was exactly the same each week and, of course, only one Eucharistic Prayer, in those days called the Canon of the Mass, was available. The entire Mass was in Latin (except for a few words in Hebrew and Greek). On Sundays, however, a break occurred between the Gospel and the Creed, when the priest left the altar, ascended the pulpit, read the announcements for the week, followed by English translations of the Epistle and Gospel already read in Latin, and gave a sermon, which often followed a programme of doctrinal catechesis set for the whole year and therefore unconnected with the Readings used at Mass that week. From time to time, this break in Mass also contained the reading of the names, street by street, of each parishioner or family and the amount each had given at the quarterly collections which the priest had gathered in house to house visits. The priest celebrated every part of the Mass at the altar with his back to the people. Sometimes the Latin was said audibly; at other times, especially during the Canon, it was entirely silent. Holy Communion for the laity was under the form of bread only, received on the tongue, and kneeling at the altar rails; and mostly from hosts taken from the tabernacle and therefore previously consecrated. The congregation had nothing to say, except the second half of the Hail Mary, recited three times as a postscript at the end of Mass, followed by the Hail, holy Queen and a few other prayers said by the priest in English and ending with an invocation and response to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, all these being “for the conversion of Russia”. The requisite responses during Mass, such as Amen, Et cum spiritu tuo, Deo gratias, Sed libera nos a malo and others, were said only by the (young male) altar server(s). 3 We never questioned or doubted the rubrics and rules for the celebration of Mass. No wonder that we spoke of the priest “saying” Mass and the congregation “hearing” Mass. Those verbs were only too true. Although there is a basic and essential continuity between the Mass in those days and the Mass nowadays, there were also a great number of differences, of which the following are the main ones. The priest and server(s) started Mass by saying Psalm 42 and the Confiteor (at the foot of the steps leading up to the altar); the Scripture readings were, on most occasions, set down with little or no attempt at relevance or continuity; there were no General Intercessions; the “Offertory” was longer, more complicated and often used language that spoke of the unconsecrated bread and wine in sacrificial terms; the Greeting of Peace did not occur, nor did Communion from the chalice for the laity. The shallowness of our understanding of the Mass and its “Liturgy of the Word” and “Liturgy of the Eucharist” is demonstrated by the rule that, although to miss Mass on Sunday through one’s own fault was a mortal sin, it was only a venial sin as long as one managed to be present for the Offertory, the Consecration and the Priest’s Communion. Although the priest remained at the altar for all parts of the Mass and was mostly at the centre of the altar, he did move sometimes to one end of the table or the other. Finally, the priest had to learn to perform many different gestures as he “said” Mass; above all there were a great number of little crosses or blessings that had to be performed by the priest’s hand over the elements, ten before and fifteen after the Consecration. Some priests performed these crosses so rapidly and vigorously that the effect, seen by the congregation, was of a violent agitation of the back of the chasuble. An allegorical explanation of the Mass was popular in those days, various elements being thought to represent items or moments connected with Our Lord’s Passion and Death. For example, the priest’s vestments represented different garments with which his judges clothed Jesus or cords and ropes which bound him during his trial and journey to Calvary, although the chasuble, with a cross on the back, also stood for his cross; the steps to the altar represented the hill of Calvary.

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